Conversation

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
not that i particularly have a leg to stand on in my own friendships. i have left behind a lot of friends and i am not happy about it but i also don't know what to do. we weren't meant to try to maintain friendships without periodic *unplanned* physical contact
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
there's a kind of intimacy i had with my high school friends, especially the ones who knew me in middle school, that i *cannot* have with anybody else, because nobody else got to see me grow up like that, and grow up with me; similarly with college
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
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Replying to @liminal_warmth
we normalized moving away from our high school communities to go to college then moving a second time away from our college communities to get a job
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
there's also an intimacy i've never had and never will have, which is with a family i felt loved and understood by. as much as i like the "found family" trope there is something legitimately special about your literal actual family, which is that they *can't stop being family*
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
we talk a lot about "atomization" here on the birdsite and a big component of what that means is that it's normal to leave behind everyone you love except possibly a romantic partner to move cities for a job. everyone is disposable and we all know that about each other
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
i suspect it may be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to form deep friendships under these kinds of disposability conditions. marriage is now the only ritual we have for credibly publicly declaring to other people "this person is not disposable to me anymore"
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
i was gonna go somewhere loftier with this but i ran out of steam. the emotional core is just that i'm lonely as shit and don't really know what to do about it. probably some of you are the same and, well, here we are on the birdsite together, hi
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